Banishing... the hidden power of it on p. 94 of Street Magic Options

[suoq]

Mac: But our common sense is cheeky and fun!
Thorny: [referring to Farva] Yeah, and his common sense is cruel and tragic.
Foster: [after a pause] Which... makes them not really common sense at all.
Mac: [in a silly voice] Evil common sense!

[Neurosis]

Everybody and his dog disses the Banishing Skill. But check this out:

On page 94 of Street Magic, under Attack of Will, it says, "The attack of will bypasses the spirit's Immunity to Normal Weapons and is otherwise resolved as a normal melee attack."

For the purposes of this attack form, spirits have no ItNW. So all they get to avoid damage is REA + Dodge and to resist damage is their WIL (ie. Force). Let's take a magician who is built to resist Drain with WIL + CHA, let's give her 5 in each, and has a Skill of 5 in Banishing. Banishing foci are limited to a spirit type, but cheap. I'll throw in one at F2 here, to allow the magician to have a couple available. Throw in a specialization, and the magician has a good spread of spirit types to get a bonus of 2 dice. An easy, ordinary build for 12 dice.

An attack of will from this magician will do base 5 DV augmented by net hits (no need for melee combat skills, MAG rating of the attacker is immaterial, no Drain, no armor to block the attack, no Counterspelling to block the attack, no Summoning Magician's MAG to block the attack, works full strength in background count while the spirit is weakened).

Yes, you can throw a high Force spirit at this magician that is too powerful. You can do that for any attack form. Every other attack form has at least one way the spirit's resistance can be bumped. This one doesn't.

I know it's probably already been brought up by this point in the thread (I was lazy and didn't read past the OP) but a Force 5 Spirit of Fire, not exactly the "big leagues", has a melee defense pool of 13 to throw against the attack of will even hitting.

Quick Edit:

*looks at last page of thread*

And I'm glad I didn't.

[Spanky_Harrison]

Say what you want about how effective they are or aren't, but I think attacks of will are pretty cool.

My roommate is currently playing a spirit punching detective. The key ingredients for spirit punching were as follows:

Banishing 4 with a specialization in attacks of will
Willpower 5
Charisma 5 (hes only human)
level 3 in Kiai martial art
increase willpower spell
increase charisma spell

So he boosts up his willpower and charisma (ideally by 4 each) with the spells. And so long as he goes in astral, the WP boost counteracts the penalties for sustaining the spells. Then he finds a spirit, and falcon punches it with 11 or so dice (I don't remember the exact numbers). While thats certainly not amazing, he only needs 1 net. Cause his base damage is 12 or so, due to the enhanced charisma and the +3 from the spirit shout martial art.

In our last session, he took out a force 5 spirit of man in one punch, then proceeded to beat the tar out of its controlling magician in astral combat.

Now, its definitely not the most amazing or efficient thing ever. In fact, its rather costly for what it does. BUT, it IS totally awesome.

[Draco18s]

That's not so much "Attacks of Will are good" as it is "he built a character to do Attacks of Will." A F5 spirit isn't even dangerous to most people. Hell, our gunbunny shot a F7 spirit of man to death in a single pass (hold out pistol + stick n' shock, his first simple action left it with 9 boxes of stun).

It's kind of like Monks in D&D: it wouldn't be a trap if it weren't for every other class ever.